


‘cause i’m losing hope

by Cafelesbian



Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Angst, alex and brock deserve no rights, pretty much exclusively
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian
Summary: The worst years of Bucky’s life.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1428403
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47





	‘cause i’m losing hope

**Author's Note:**

> i literally cannot stress the warnings enough this takes place when bucky is being abused by pierce and brock and others and there is rape and physical abuse and people treating bucky badly aso please don’t read if that’s going to be upsetting to you. in terms of graphicness, it’s about on par w any of the other parts of this series that deal w buckys trauma but since this is a prequel there’s basically no reprieve until the very end so be warned. there is also talking/thinking about suicide so just be careful with this please
> 
> but if you want a heavy dose of sadness, here u go! this was requested so knock urself out henry

The day Bucky runs away from home, he almost calls Steve.

He stands at a payphone, his whole body shaking, and punches his number in, turning a quarter over in his fingers and trying to make himself put it in. It’s the fear that stops him. His hand trembles so badly he drops the coin. 

If he calls Steve, Steve will be so angry with him. Steve will take one look at him and sneer at what he’s become. If they’d done the things they did to him at that place to Steve, Steve would have fought back. He’d never have let anyone call him a fag or a disgrace or inject him with something that makes him sick while they played porn. 

He presses his forehead against the metal and sobs, so small. Then he puts the phone back and leaves.

***

His whole body hurts.

It has been hours, and he hasn’t moved from the alley. He can’t. Every time he moves to stand, nausea slams him and he sinks to the ground again. He has never felt so repulsive, not even after heaving into a bucket as a porno played in front of him and a woman said, _See, see how disgusting this is?_ He has stopped crying because he doesn’t think his body can make tears anymore. He can feel something dry between his legs, blood or come, he doesn’t know. He’s rocking. He doesn’t know how long he’s been doing that either.

He thinks, for a moment, about going home. He thinks he wants his mom.

He wants Steve, but he imagines Steve seeing him like this and shame burns him. 

“Hey,” someone snaps, at some point. He looks up, whole body going slack with fear. A cop is standing over him. “Get out of here. Move.”

Bucky makes himself say, “I need help.” His voice is so small.

The cop snorts. “You need to leave before I arrest you, pretty boy. Go run your game somewhere else.”

He thinks he’s crying again. “Someone—someone attacked me—“

“That’s what they all say,” the cop snaps. “Out. Now.” He slides his hand into a pocket on his pants and pulls out a taser, and Bucky makes himself move.

***

He doesn’t eat for a few days after that. He feels as if his body has been mutated into something else, something not his, something he can’t stand to inhabit or look at. He doesn’t sleep and when he does, he wakes up screaming. He cries so much his head hurts permanently.

But he’s so hungry, and he returns there, and this time there’s a different guy and Bucky gives him what he wants. He cries through it. The guy asks him to be quiet.

He spends the rest of that night getting sick, feeling so dirty, something that isn’t human and certainly isn’t him. His body shakes like it never has before, like he’s going to fall to pieces, which he might. He sobs and sobs and tries to pull himself together but can’t. It doesn’t go away, that vileness.

***

People love the arm, that’s what he learns. They squeeze at it and stroke it and grope it, and he lets them because he needs to eat, and when it’s freezing, he needs to be able to get a shitty hotel room. He finds his way into the clubs that allow this stuff, and men grind up against him and put a hand on his hip and guide him to the bathroom and fuck him there, or tell him he’s coming home with them and he never says yes or no because they don’t ask. Usually, he can just sever himself from what’s happening, can slip into some dark, empty place while they thrust callously into him. Sometimes he can’t, and when he can’t, he usually panics, and sometimes they back off and ask him if he’s alright and what they did, but sometimes they tell him they paid already and to shut the fuck up, don’t you do this for a living? And he knows they’re right so he cries quietly while they do it. They call him things. _Slut,_ mostly, and _whore_ and _desperate_ and _worthless,_ because he is, but other things. _Baby_ and _honey_ and _sweetheart_ , things Steve used to call him with so much love, things that now make him recoil. _Princess, little boy, fucktoy, cockhole, fag, filthy, brat, cripple, freak, deformed._ And James. Before this, he was indifferent to James—it was more like a middle name, there but not important or thought about, but he hates it now. People hiss it in his ear now, roll it grotesquely on their tongue like it's theirs, and he grows to loathe it. No one has called him Bucky in months.

He is constantly dirty. He showers as often as he can, which is usually when someone has him stay the night or if they let him rinse off afterwards, but it’s never enough. He hasn’t felt clean in so long.

He’s starving. His body is constantly exhausted, and he isn’t eating enough and he’s throwing up more than he ever has in his life and the nerves in his whole body are so overworked and malnourished that he can feel them giving up. He is absolutely desperate one night and he goes home with some guy who picks him up off the street. He’s so hungry his vision keeps going white, but he kisses him anyway, grinds on him and touches him more than he usually does but he’s so weak that he can barely think straight, and when the guy pushes him roughly against the wall his thoughts tailspin into a hideous memory and he goes slack with terror, the room going grey.

When he blinks himself back to present, he isn’t being touched anymore. He’s on his knees, curled into fetal position, whimpering, and the guy has backed off and looks panicked. You fucked it up, Bucky thinks hysterically, _he’s going to be so angry he’s going to fuck you anyway and not pay you fix it fix it—_

“James,” the guy says, frantically, “are you okay? You good?”

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers. “I’m—I’m so sorry—“ He gets up, swaying a little with hunger, and reaches forward to unbutton the guy’s shirt. _(Slut.)_ The man steps back and stares at him.

The guy rubs his neck. “No, man, I’m sorry. Want me—want me to get you a cab?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I’m fine, I’m still—I still want you to fuck me, still wanna feel you.” He’s repulsed with himself. The guy, apparently, is too, because he steps back again and shakes his head, then squints.

“Jesus,” the guy says, “how old are you?” It’s the first long look he’s gotten at Bucky’s face under the light, and Bucky flinches.

“Twenty,” Bucky manages.

“What year were you born?”

Bucky shuts his eyes.

The guy scrubs a hand down his face. “Are you even eighteen?”

He shakes his head, not looking up.

“Fuck,” the guy says, to himself. “Okay. God. Well, I’m obviously not sleeping with you, kid.”

“Please don’t call the cops,” Bucky whispers. “You—you can still… you can still fuck me, I’m fine—“

“No,” the guy says. “Jesus. Um.” The guy reaches into his jeans, Bucky assumes, for a condom. He closes his eyes and digs his nails into his palm and waits, but when he opens them again, the guy is holding out a few twenties.

“Take it and go get some food and go to a shelter, okay? You really, really shouldn’t be doing this.”

Bucky stares at him. The guy pinches the bridge of his nose. “Get dressed. I don’t need my name on the registry.”

He pockets the money and leaves so fast his vision spins again, then shoves down a burger and sleeps a few restless, miserable hours and does it again.

***

He looks, at one point, at some guy’s calendar, and finds it’s February, which means he’s been doing this for five months and he’s eighteen years old now. Time has stopped working normally. It’s all misery and fear, and it blankets everything so every day blends against one another until he meets Wanda.

Wanda is probably the closest thing to a miracle Bucky could have gotten. She makes him come home and eat and stay the night, and she doesn’t touch him too much and she calls him ‘Bucky’ which, in and of itself, makes him want to burst into tears when she first does it. The night after he meets her, he debates whether to go back there; she said he could, but he doesn’t want to overstep or burden her, but it felt so nice to be talked to like a person and to have somewhere to sleep and shower where someone wasn’t waiting to fuck him on the other side of the door that he does go back.

The second night he stays there, he half-sleeps on the couch, restless and uneasy. The usual nightmares don’t tear screams from his throat tonight, but they leave him flinching and permanently braced against the threats, and when thin, oily lighting filters in and signals the morning, he’s been lying awake for a long time.

Scott gets up first. Bucky coils in on himself instinctually, but Scott doesn’t come over, doesn’t pet his hair or squeeze what’s left of his arm or tell him it’s time to pay him back. Instead, he hums to some stupid eighties song and pours himself a bowl of cereal. Bucky wants to pretend to sleep until he leaves, but then he coughs and Scott glances over and says, “Hey. You up?”

Bucky swallows and tries to tame the trembling by squeezing the couch cushion. He knows what’s about to happen.

“Sorry,” he says softly.

Scott blinks. “You’re alright, man,” he says cheerfully. “Want some breakfast?” Bucky shakes his head immediately. “Honestly, kid, you look like you could use some.” Scott doesn’t wait for an answer. “We’ve got cereal, we’ve got toast, I could attempt eggs—”

“Jesus, trying to kill him?” Wanda intervenes, materializing in the doorway. “Hey, Bucky,” she adds easily, yawning. She smacks Scott good-naturedly in the back of his head and he fake-scowls and she grins. “Eat something, seriously.”

If Wanda is here, Bucky reasons, Scott won’t do anything to him. He shoves down some cereal and Wanda tells him to come back that night so he does.

He likes her so much. They end up spending more time together in the next few weeks than he’s spend with anyone over the last six months, and she never touches him for too long or grabs him unexpectedly and it’s such a relief that he always wants to break down in tears and thank her, but he never does. He’s there most nights, except for when someone asks him to stay over or when he’s too far up or downtown and doesn’t have the energy to make it back. The feeling that he’s intruding wanes, if only a little. She tells him they all like him there, and he tries to bring food or something back so he isn’t just sucking the little resources they have, but no one there ever makes him feel like a burden and he is constantly terrified of the other shoe dropping.

There’s also the fact that Scott makes him nervous. So do Luis and Peter, but they aren’t there all the time like Scott is. He’s never done anything to Bucky, but whenever he’s there and Wanda leaves the room, he braces himself. He’s been staying there all the time, and he knows he owes him but he doesn’t want to, and when Scott decides he wants to be repaid, he can’t say no.

One day, they’re in the kitchen, and Wanda slips into the bathroom. Bucky is making pasta, and Scott comes up beside him and claps him on the shoulder and he flinches so hard he drops the spoon he’s stirring with and cowers, shoulders turned in.

“Sorry, sorry,” Scott says immediately, backing off, but then he raises his hands and Bucky presses his back into the wall.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Scott blinks. “Bucky, it’s okay,” he says, the softest Bucky has ever heard his voice. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes down, cheeks hot, body trembling.

“You know,” Scott says gently to him. “I’m not—I’m not gonna hurt you, or anything, Bucky. I promise.”

Bucky looks down. “I know,” he says quietly, although he obviously doesn’t. Then Wanda comes back, and he relaxes a little.

But after that, Scott never touches him, not even to tap him on the shoulder to get past him and that eases the panic a little until Bucky stops flinching when he looks at him and tensing when he’s left alone, and when he stops being scared of him, he becomes aware he rather likes Scott, and the first time he ever hugs him weeks and weeks later, Scott gives him a small, understanding little grin.

***

Things are good for a while.

Actually, good isn’t true. Good is relative. For Bucky, there is a minimum amount of misery he’s required to be at, and for a while, he stays relatively at the cusp of it. He still goes out there and finds himself blacking out for hours at a time in the apartments of men two or three times his age, only now, he doesn’t stumble out and collapse into an alley to tremble and sob until the next one comes along, or get to his knees and part his lips, hating himself, and suck them off so that they’d let him say the night.

Instead, he goes back to Wanda and Scott’s. He lives there and pays rent, but it isn’t his, Bucky knows. It feels temporary, this love. He knows the day is coming when their patience for the fact that he showers until he’s bled them dry of hot water.

The day he is utterly and entirely convinced they’re going to kick him out comes when he gets arrested and charged. It happened once, when he hadn’t known what areas to avoid or what undercover cops tended to look like or what areas they would never show up at because people paid them not to. It was right before he met Wanda and he’d been so wracked with terror that he hadn’t slept at all the night they kept him in the cell and even the prosecutor had felt bad for him because they agreed to let him off for a hundred bucks, which he had.

He’s gotten caught other times, obviously, but they all knew what he was and in every other case, there had been at least one cop there who valued a blowjob over putting him in jail for three months, and when those were the options he would close his eyes and give them what he wanted.

It happens again, though. Two cops shove him against the wall in an alley and make a couple of comments about the missing arm and lock him up. “Shame,” one of them sneers, “pretty little cripple like you, bet you were raking it in.”

Bucky blinks, eyes glassy, hand shaking. “If you—if you let me leave, I’ll do whatever you want,” he says, as simpery as he can when he’s about to cry until he makes himself sick.

The guy slaps him hard across the face. “Jesus, you little slut,” he laughs, and then shoves him to his knees and locks the door behind him.

The defense attorney asks him if he’s eighteen, and when he nods, she grimaces and says, “Okay. Well, it’s not gonna be jail. They’re offering you a four hundred dollar fine. Sorry, kid.”

He calls Wanda, shivering and crying, and asks if she has any money she can lend him, he’ll pay her back next week, he is so, so sorry and he doesn’t blame her if not, and she gets there in an hour.

Scott drives, and he’s waiting outside when they let him leave. “You okay?” he says, as they climb in the back.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky says, and immediately starts sobbing. “I can—I can pay you back, I’m—I’m so—“

Wanda wraps an arm around his shoulder. “Babe,” she says gently, “it’s okay, yeah? We’ve all been there, Buck, it’s no big deal. No one is mad.”

Scott nods. “We weren’t doing anything,” he adds, “you saved me from another afternoon of beating Wanda and Luis and Peter at Xbox.”

Bucky chokes out what’s meant to be a laugh, but isn’t close. He’s so relieved that his body eases back a little. They’re so good. 

Wanda hugs him again. “It’s okay, Buck,” she tells him. “Are you alright? Did they do anything to you in there?”

He shakes his head, and they go home. Luis is there when they arrive, and he shoves a mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of soup in front of Bucky and says, “You okay, kid? They can really fuck you up in there,” and Bucky begins to cry again, so tired and so grateful for these friends that he doesn’t deserve.

***

A few months later, he is walking home. Every nerve in his body feels burnt, and he wants to collapse.

He is being followed in a car. He shoves his hand in his pocket and closes his eyes and picks up the pace. It has happened before, and sometimes they want him to do things and usually, he does, but he is so exhausted, so completely worn out of any strength, and he doesn’t want to.

“Hey,” the guy says. He doesn’t look up. “Hey,” he says again, louder, and Bucky flinches and stops.

“James, right?” It’s a guy he has slept with before, one of the crueler ones. Bucky winces.

“I’m not working right now,” Bucky tells him. His voice shakes.

The guy snorts. “I just want a quickie, princess. In and out in no time.”

Bucky swallows. Wanda’s apartment is right there. “No.”

The guy watches him. “You live there, right?” He jerks his head at the apartment. Weak terror shudders through Bucky. He doesn’t say anything. “C’mon, sweetheart. Get in the car.”

He doesn’t move. “My friends are in there,” he says, voice small. “If—If you try to—to do something—”

The guy rolls his eyes and throws his door open. He is bigger than Bucky, and Bucky flinches back. He’s holding a pistol. Bucky shuts his eyes.

“Your friends wanna come out here?” he says, and raises the gun, just enough.

Bucky makes a small gasping noise, all of his air twisted to nothingness. The guy jerks his head, and he gets in the passenger seat.

***

He leaves after that. He doesn’t tell Wanda and Scott what happened. He can’t handle them hating him for putting them in danger, but he won’t stay there where they can get hurt too. He still sees them. He has dinner there and sleeps there when it’s bitterly cold or when the pain is unbearable or when Wanda calls him because everyone is out and she doesn’t want to be alone. But he knows, completely and undeniably, that he isn’t a person for whom home exists.

***

He meets Brock Rumlow a few months before he turns twenty. He knows he’s dangerous, and he goes home with him the second time he meets him anyway, and when he tells him he doesn’t want to do this anymore, Brock laughs, then hits him.

Much later, when he unties him, Bucky thinks, at first, he can’t move. He still can’t see, and he curls in on himself to try to protect himself from the next wave of agony, as if that will help, but Brock yanks the blindfold off and undoes the gag and leans against the wall, smirking at him. Rumlow watches him as he staggers to his feet and immediately stumbles to his knees. 

“Well, if you’re begging for it, sweetheart,” he laughs, and steps forward. Bucky flinches back, and Brock growls, “Fucking stay still,” as he unzips his jeans and grabs Bucky by the hair.

“Please,” Bucky gasps, “please, please, n-no more, no, _no_ —“

Brock slaps him. “Need something to shut you up, don’t you?” He mocks, and pries Bucky’s mouth open. 

He lets Bucky get dressed after that, watching him. Bucky doesn’t look at him when he turns towards the door.

Brock stops him, grabbing him by the chin and squeezing. Tears burn Bucky’s eyes.

“Thank me,” he says, and grins, hideous.

He doesn’t. He stares at the ground and tries to get any words to stick to his throat, but he can’t even whimper in fear.

“Say ‘thank you for giving me what I need, sir,’” Brock snarls, yanking his hair back. “Need me to punish you again, do you—“

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers. He wants to die. “Th-thank y-y-you for giving me what I n-need, sir.”

He doesn’t go back to Wanda’s that night. He rocks himself back and forth in an alley. It’s freezing, but he welcomes it, because that pain is preferable to the other pain that’s swallowing him up. He balls up his jacket and presses it against his face and screams until he can’t anymore, then sobs until he passes out.

The next time Bucky sees him, he doesn’t fight it, just lets himself be used and tries to go somewhere else. He doesn’t even close his eyes, just stares blankly at the back of his car, begging the world to let it end, and when it does, he doesn’t feel any safer or less grotesque.

***

He is reminded, that January, of everything he once, inexplicably had. He’s walking past a newsstand and he looks to the side and he startles at the Paper magazine cover and has to blink to be sure he isn’t hallucinating it.

Steve looks so grown up. He’s posed, a little unnaturally, on the cover, one hand running through his hair, a side-smile that only Bucky knows as ingenuine plastered on his face. He picks it up and finds his hand is shaking.

_Twenty-one year old Steve Rogers taking the art world by storm—_

“You gonna buy that?” the guy asks.

Bucky blinks, and realizes his eyes are burning with tears. He doesn’t have money to be buying magazines, but he shoves a twenty at the guy and takes it.

Steve has existed in Bucky's head almost as a fantasy for the last two years. If it weren't for the vivacity of the memories and the photos tucked into the pocket of a journal he never opens but sometimes runs his fingers over to make sure is still there and a tee shirt that he never wears but that, if the nightmares are terrible, he will press his face into when he cries, he might have thought Steve was a dream, a fiction concocted by a brain that knows only suffering. He sometimes sees a flash of blonde or hears a voice and turns, heart racing, only to see someone who is not Steve. But this is him. This is his fourth exhibit and his biggest. He’s had a few others, but the Whitney is a huge deal. He mostly does paintings now, but sometimes he sketches things. It makes Bucky’s head hurt, but he keeps reading it.

_—What’s behind the ten paintings being featured here—and much of Rogers’ other work—is a feeling of resounding loss, perhaps tragedy. He paints objectively breathtaking pieces with such delicacy and care and attention to color and that it feels, at times, like looking at shots from a film, a hint of movement in them. There is something undeniably melancholy about them, though; empty, incomplete looking spaces, hands that don’t quite touch, indistinguishable figures with a severed string between them._

_I asked him during this interview why. “I don’t know,” he said. He smiled wryly. “I, um—it’s what comes to me. I guess I’m not happy enough to be doing, like, sunflower paintings. Although, I guess Van Gogh wasn’t thrilled either. Not that I think I’m Van Gogh, but you get my point.”—_

It’s the closest to hearing his voice Bucky has gotten in two years, and he chokes out something between a laugh and a sob. It is so Steve Rogers. Bucky misses him so much, suddenly, that he thinks it might stop his heart.

_—I asked him if he lost someone. He looked down. “Yeah,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.—_

Bucky squeezes until the paper tears at the edges.

His exhibit opens at the Whitney in one week. Bucky closes his eyes and imagines, for a moment, going and seeing Steve. He lets himself imagine Steve’s eyes going soft in the way that had once been reserved for him alone. He imagines Steve wrapping his arms around him, imagines letting himself be held, imagines weeping into his shoulder and Steve saying something Steve-ish like _It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay, I’ve got you now, Buck, you’re safe._

Then his brain sneers, _Yeah? You think you belong there, at his opening? You think he wants to spend that night dealing with his disgusting pathetic slut ex boyfriend? You think he’d be happy to see you? You think you deserve him?_

He keeps the magazine anyway. Some nights, when he can’t fall asleep, he rereads parts of it. It’s half for the peace and half for the punishment. _Look at where he is and look at you. Look at what you lost._

***

He scopes the guy out from across the club. There are a few of these men every week who come in here, wealthy, older businessmen in the throes of a belated midlife crisis looking for a one night stand. This guy is probably in his sixties, wearing a suit that looks so expensive it probably shouldn’t be exposed to whatever mix of chemical toxins are choking the air right now, his face hard and tight. He’s looking around, eyes narrowed, purposeful. A couple of people have already approached him, and he shook them off.

Bucky swallows and closes his eyes. He constricts his fist until his nails puncture his palm, and then he heads over there. 

He pretends not to be interested at first. He leans across the bar and says something to the bartender and makes sure the guy sees the arm. He can feel himself being watched. He bites his cheek and turns away.

There’s a hand on his hip, rough and without a fraction of insecurity. 

“What’s your name?” the guy says. His voice is cold and smooth.

Bucky turns around, slipping effortlessly into flirting. “James,” he says.

“James,” the guy repeats, with a thin, sharp-edged smile. His hand is still on Bucky’s hip; it’s gone tighter. “Have a seat.”

Bucky does.

“Do I get your name?” he says. Smiles. Tilts his chin up just a little.

He smiles callously again. “You don’t know me, hm?”

Bucky will mock him later to Wanda. “Should I?”

“Probably,” he says. He sips his drink. “Alexander.” He doesn’t offer a last name, and Bucky doesn’t care.

“What do you do that I should know you for, Alexander?” Bucky says. He can feel his body kicking into autopilot. He’s so tired.

Alexander thinks this over, and then says, “I’m a CEO.”

“Impressive,” Bucky says with a smirk. He does look vaguely familiar, although he doesn’t care enough to go digging for where he’s seen him before.

Apparently, the compliment was the right move. “Principle Trust Bank,” he says, which explains the suit. Those banks are fucking everywhere.

It doesn’t take long. Alexander watches every movement he makes almost obsessively, and he says, “Come back to my house,” before he finishes his drink and Bucky says yes.

He has a penthouse, because of course he does. Bucky says some vague, generic compliment and he looks pleased.

Alexander says, “On your knees, then, James, be a good boy.” It’s not vicious, but it’s demanding. Bucky’s stomach knots, but he does it. Maybe he’ll be one of the ones who does it gently and quickly.

So he blows CEO Alexander even though he can see a photo of the wife and kids from where he’s kneeling. He’s rougher than Bucky expected; he yanks his hair and pinches at his cheek and fucks his throat, but he doesn’t let the tears burst through yet. He’s paying, so he gets this.

He gives Bucky fifty. “James,” he says, and strokes his cheek. “Come back next week, will you? Wednesday, let’s say seven PM?”

He says yes. He isn’t far from Wanda’s, so he goes there.

“Look up the CEO of Principle Trust Bank,” he tells Wanda later.

“Alexander Pierce,” she says, after a moment. “Why?”

He leans his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes. “Went back to his place tonight.”

“No kidding,” Wanda says, and snorts, glancing back at the search results. “He had a cheating scandal a few years back. Old habits, I guess.”

Bucky hums in agreement. “Yeah, whatever.”

“How was he?” Wanda asks him.

Bucky shrugs. “Not too bad.”

***

“Want a glass of wine?” Alexander offers him a week later. They might be sitting down for a business meeting, the casualness he says it with.

“I’m alright, thank you,” Bucky replies.

Alexander doesn’t make a move to stop. “It’s the least I can do,” he says. It’s not, but Bucky doesn’t say that. “I have an excellent collection. You okay with white?”

Bucky’s mouth has gone dry. “I really—I don’t—”

“Please, James. I’ll feel like a better host if I give you something.”

“I’m, um, I’m not twenty-one—”

Alexander laughs. “I won’t call the cops.”

Bucky says quietly, “White is fine.” So he takes it and sips it, and then Alexander suggests they move to the bedroom and Bucky braces himself.

“Why don’t you get undressed for me?” Alexander murmurs. Bucky’s stomach is inverting itself with something other than just the usual disgust, and he tries to draw a breath but the air feels like it’s grown thick and toxic and it makes it worse.

“Yeah,” Bucky thinks he says, but he can’t be sure. He reaches to tug at his shirt, but misses the hem entirely and then staggers to his knees.

Alexander watches this with total apathy. Bucky thinks he gasps, “ _Please,_ ” but he doesn’t know if it makes it to his lips before his head sparks into black.

***

He wakes up in pieces, coming to life only to be dragged under by pain again, until he manages to stay awake long enough to move. Everything hurts in a way it never has. His bones are unimaginably heavy, like someone has cut him open and poured cement in and sewn him up again. When he opens his eyes, everything is fuzzy and dark.

He gasps, and it hurts. He tries to sit up and it takes him a few tries, and then the terror rushes in, belated and violent. He doesn’t know where he is or who is here. He realizes that there’s a light, and it’s coming from a lamp on the bedside table, and at some point he looks down and so many bruises are swelling on his arm that he thinks, at first, he’s seeing wrong.

He remembers slowly, images caving in on him. Alexander Pierce’s bedroom. The wine he wanted Bucky to drink. He tries to stand and his body aches so much he collapses, and he tries to get up again and he falls and he makes it to the bathroom half crawling, half staggering.

He looks in the mirror and flinches. His face is sheet white and soaked in blood, dried around his nose and mouth and dripping down his chin. His wrist is bloody and raw with ropeburn. He gasps again, a choked, ragged sound, and he blacks out briefly and when he comes back, he’s on his knees. There’s blood between his legs.

He kneels over the toilet and gets sick, his body shivering, almost convulsing. He’s scared. He’s so scared that he thinks _I want Steve._

At some point, he stands, legs so weak he thinks he might get sick again, and makes it back into the bedroom. He dresses and doesn’t look at himself and makes it to the kitchen and draws back, arm tucked around himself, eyes down.

“You feeling okay?” Alexander asks him. He’s pouring himself a glass of milk, and he smirks. “You want some?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Not because he’s terrified, although he is, but because he thinks he’s too weak to talk. He moves towards the door, and Alexander puts himself in front of it.

“Sit, James.” He nods to the couch. Bucky doesn’t move. “I said sit,” he repeats, voice low, and Bucky listens. His head writhes with pain. “Not on the couch,” he snaps. “Kneel.” He does it, shivering so hard he’s almost convulsing.

Bucky watches him, vision in and out, as he sets a laptop down and opens it. He flinches when Alexander touches the back of his head.

Pierce laughs. “None of that, sweetheart.” Then he grabs his chin and forces it up, and Bucky whimpers. “Look at this.”

He can’t see, entirely, but after a moment of staring blankly he realizes he’s looking at photos of himself. The room shudders.

“So,” Alexander says, petting his hair. He shudders. “You’re gonna come back here, when I tell you, for as long as I want, or these will go up online. Everyone you know will know what a slut you are, and you’ll go to prison, and you’ll never be anything other than a cheap little whore that everyone in America can watch online, understand?”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t understand at all because his brain is still sparking and gasping and he is so scared that he’s stopped feeling it at all. Pierce laughs and tilts his head up so he’s looking at him, and Bucky can’t say a word because he can’t comprehend any of this.

Alexander unzips the fly of his pants. Bucky rears back.

“I don’t think so,” Pierce sneers, and slaps him. 

He closes his eyes while he thrusts down his mouth, too weak to fight him. Afterwards, Alexander smiles.

“I’ll see you next week, James,” he says evenly.

He can’t make himself say anything. He’s too stunned by what’s just happened to fully process, so he nods and stumbles out, all of him numb, and by next Wednesday, he’s convinced himself the entire thing might have been a fever dream because this can’t possibly be real.

But it is.

***

He stands outside of Alexander’s door and tries to stop crying. It is uncontrollable. He gasps and closes his eyes and pinches the bruises on his stomach for a reprieve, but it doesn’t stop. He’s so scared and so trapped, owned now by this man who is about to hurt him until he can’t breathe and by the time the bruises begin to fade, he will be back here. He doesn’t want to go in crying, knows that Alexander will punish him for it, and he drags his hand under his eyes but it doesn’t help.

He presses his hand over his mouth and crouches, trying to pull himself together. He wishes, right now, that he could slip away from himself, but he can’t control it when it happens, although he welcomes it, these days. His body keeps shuddering.

The door pulls open, and Bucky staggers to his feet. “Jesus,” Pierce sneers, “you’re so fucking pathetic, you know that?”

Bucky looks down. The tears keep coming. 

Alexander grabs his chin. He makes a choked, terrified noise in the back of his throat.

“What do you do when I talk to you?” he snarls. Bucky swallows hard. Alexander slaps him. _“What?”_

“Look at you,” Bucky whispers. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

Alexander laughs, low and cruel. “You’re fucking late. Get inside.”

***

Between the impossible pain and terror of Wednesday nights, Bucky still goes out and lets himself get fucked by other guys. He completely checks out, because if he doesn’t he’ll struggle and cry and beg without meaning to and it’s easier to just lie there, limp and empty, and let them finish.

Brock comes sometimes, when the universe decides he isn’t miserable enough. So does Jack Rollins, although less often but just as awful, to get him drunk and then fuck him on the floor of his apartment so Bucky can’t even scream or struggle, just wait for it to end. He’s being hurt so much that he stops letting even Wanda touch him. He wakes up sobbing and shaking almost every night and showers at four in the morning and tries to imagine he is somewhere else, a million miles away, small and unused and clean, his body something else that he never has to inhabit again.

“Quit fucking crying,” Brock sneers one night, and slaps his belt across Bucky’s thighs. “You asked for this, you know. Don’t get to change your mind now, you fucking whore.”

And he’s right, Bucky thinks, and bites down on the sobs so Brock doesn’t hit him again. He did ask for this. It is his fault. He caused this but he hates it, he fucking hates it, and he has no one to blame but himself for being so disgusting, for being such a slut.

Brock wraps a hand around his throat, and between bursts of consciousness, Bucky thinks he whimpers for Steve.

***

“Bucky,” someone says, “Bucky!”

Someone is shaking him, and he flinches back and whimpers. Astonishingly, the hand on his shoulder retreats. He can’t remember where he is, and he pulls his knees to his chest. 

“Bucky,” someone says, “Buck. It’s Scott. You’re at my place, you’re okay. Can you hear me?”

He blinks and lifts his head, confused. Scott and Luis are both there looking very worried, Luis hovering a little further back, Scott crouched next to the couch.

“Bucky?” Scott says again, gently.

Bucky closes his eyes. “Sorry,” he whispers. His body feels so numb, utterly disconnected from him, controlled and puppeted by some force bigger than him.

“No, Bucky, you—what’s going on? You were just—just staring forward, you weren’t, um—are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. He jumps a little when he realizes Luis has moved in, but he hands Bucky a glass of water and then steps back, and Bucky tries to thank him but can’t find the words.

“Bucky,” Scott says again, “what’s going on?”

He blinks and stares down. It’s Wednesday.

“I have to go,” he mumbles, and stands. His vision spins briefly, and he stumbles. He hasn’t been eating much lately.

Scott and Luis exchange a glance. “Go where?” Luis says. “Buddy, sit, eat something, Wanda will be here in a little…” Bucky ignores him. His body is shaking so badly it has become a hum, an almost permanent sensation. He goes for the door.

“Bucky,” Scott says, “stop.” When he doesn’t, Scott gets in front of him and touches his shoulder, and he rears back. “Bucky, please don’t go out tonight.”

“Let go of me,” Bucky whispers. His voice sounds pathetic, small and scared. Scott does.

“Bucky—” Scott starts, but he’s gone, out and down the flight of stairs, everything in him reduced to terror.

***

“Why are you doing this to me?” Bucky whispers one night. He’s braced in on himself on the couch. Everything hurts so much he’s delirious, otherwise he’d never have said it.

Alexander laughs and pats his cheek roughly. Then he stands up and walks away, for a moment. When he comes back, he’s holding his laptop.

“Watch this.” He shoves Bucky to the ground, then yanks his hair up until he gets to his knees. He opens his computer and taps something in, then smiles, turning it towards Bucky.

It’s one of the videos from that second night that he showed Bucky before but he was too drugged up and pained to really see. Bucky whimpers at it, and Pierce smirks.

 _“Watch,_ ” he snarls when Bucky looks away, grabbing his chin and forcing it up. “Look at yourself. Look at what a disgusting little slut you are. You’re doing this to yourself.”

“You’re bad, James,” Alexander says, his voice neutral. “You’re worthless, you’re disgusting, you’re unnatural, you’re deformed. Everything about you is bad. Everything that has ever happened to you is on you.”

Bucky closes his eyes. Pierce grabs him by the hair and forces his head up; Bucky whimpers, so quietly, “No, please—”

Alexander hits him. He sobs, broken and without caring anymore. He wants to die so badly that he momentarily thinks the force of the wish might make it so.

“Say it,” Pierce tells him. “Say what you are.”

He has no defiance left anymore, no pride. “I’m bad,” he whimpers. Pierce twists his hair. “And—and—and disgusting, and—and worthless and—and d-deformed and un-unnatural.” He sobs again. “P-Please let me—let me go.”

Alexander moves his hand to Bucky’s arm and squeezes a bruise there. Bucky just cries. “And whose are you?”

“Yours,” he chokes out.

Pierce grabs his chin again. “Lie on your stomach, sweetheart.”

Bucky gasps, “P-Please, please, don’t make me do any-anymore—”

Pierce hits him again, and Bucky, still crying, lets himself be pushed onto his stomach.

***

Bucky kneels, that night, in the shower, and tries to handle the pain, to mince it into bearable fractions so that it doesn’t consume him. Blood whirls in the water, pink and delicate, and he stares at it. He thinks he’s crying—his body shakes with it—but he can’t be sure.

There are so many bruises, all of them hideous, stark and full and leering. His body just absorbs the pain, and the blood vessels keep splitting open and arranging themselves a little differently to mark the shame and brutality.

Wanda has left a razor on the side of the bath. He stares at it, his vision quivering with pain. He thinks about taking it and slashing open his thighs until the blood runs thick and red the way it does when Pierce touches him, until all the suffering drains out of him and he’s left hollow and empty and good, drained of the disgust. How relieved Wanda and Scott would be.

He doesn’t, in the end, because he hears someone open the door and he knows if he tries now, they will find him and he will fail after all.

***

The nights when his wife and kid are away are always worse. When they’re in New York, Pierce only keeps him until around eleven and doesn’t do anything to him that makes a mess that can’t be easily dealt with. Since summer began, it has been unbearable. Bucky didn’t know it could be worse than it was, but Alexander finds a way.

“Get out of here,” Pierce snarls to him one night. He’s on the couch, his body inverting itself with pain, but he moves when Alexander tells him to.

He staggers to his feet and dresses, eyes squeezed shut. Everything hurts so much he can barely walk, and when he takes a step, he trips and slams his thigh into the table beside the couch and the lamp falls and smashes itself to pieces.

Dread momentarily paralyzes Bucky. He stares at it, every function in his body having ceased to exist, so scared he will never breathe again.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, though the words are so small they barely even break the air. “I’m—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, pl-please—”

Alexander’s eyes glint, the turn of a razor. “Get on the ground,” he spits.

“I didn’t mean to,” Bucky whimpers.

Alexander slaps him so hard he stumbles back. “I said get on the ground, James.” His voice is so quiet. Bucky is so, so scared.

He kneels, body trembling. Alexander walks behind him. Bucky flinches.

Then Alexander shoves him, so hard he has to catch himself with his hand, and he gasps at the pain. Blood pools weakly underneath his palm. 

“You stupid little bitch!” Alexander screams. “You stupid, worthless little slut! Look what you fucking did!”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, his voice so small. He is so scared that he thinks he might faint from it before Alexander does anything.

Alexander slaps him again. “You’re gonna be sorry.”

***

Blood runs down his arm in the shower that night. He feels faint. The cut gapes, a mouth halfway through a scream, crimson staining all of his skin.

 _You deserved it,_ Bucky thinks, _you were bad and you deserved the pain._

He wonders how long it would take to bleed out.

***

He is scared. He has spent the last three years scared, constantly scared, sickeningly scared, but these days he is so scared that it seems to press in on him until he can’t move. The terror has built and built and now it’s so big that it swallows everything, that it’s all Bucky sees when he opens his eyes and it suffocates him until he closes his them, and even then it flits through his dreams and jerks him awake.

He wants to die. Everyday he’s angry at himself for being too much of a coward to kill himself, for continuing to press his vileness in on Wanda and Scott, whose apartment he stays at most nights again. He doesn’t know what it is about people that makes them believe nothing is worse than death, because whatever death is, Alexander Pierce makes it look gentle and welcoming. But he doesn’t do it. The excuses vary—he can’t leave Scott and Wanda with a corpse in their apartment, he doesn’t have the money for the pills or drugs to do it, he doesn’t want to be another hooker pulled out of a river, an unmarked grave with no one missing him.

The reason that always stops him, though, is that he deserves this. He did this to himself and he is selfish and disgusting and even if he managed to kill himself, the universe loves nothing more than punishing him and it would find a way, so he keeps going, and when Pierce puts a hand around his throat or hits him until the world slips under a black veil, he always hope he’ll choke too long or hit too hard.

***

_He’s lying somewhere. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, but it’s soft, and it’s maybe a bed, and he’s comfortable but there’s someone in the room and when he opens his eyes they will hurt him so he keeps them squeezed shut._

_The person moves in, and Bucky flinches back. “Hey,” they say softly, “Buck—” Buck, not James, not sweetheart, not stupid little whore gonna fuck you till you can’t breathe— “it’s okay. You’re safe.”_

_He knows they’re lying, because he hasn’t been safe in so long and he will never be again. He shakes his head._

_“Bucky,” the person says, “it’s Steve.”_

_He opens his eyes, even though it will surely mean punishment. No one hits him, though, or sneers at him or tells him to kneel. It’s just Steve, crouched beside him, smiling so softly._

_“Please don’t touch me,” Bucky whispers. Steve raises his hands, but not to slap him across the face or grab his throat, just to show him he won’t touch him._

_“I won’t,” he says, “promise.”_

_Bucky winces anyway._

_“What did they do to you, Buck?” Steve says softly._

_“Please don’t leave,” he manages, “Please, please, Steve, don’t leave me with them—“_

_“Sh,” Steve says, so gently. “Sh, Bucky. I got you. You’re okay.”_

_Bucky swallows. “You can hold me,” he whispers._

_“You sure?”_

_“I want you to.”_

_Steve wraps his arms around him, warm and safe and selfless. Bucky fits himself snug against his chest and closes his eyes and sobs softly, and Steve just holds him and rocks him._

He opens his eyes, through a thick, suffocating haze, and pain rushes back in, vile and heavy, and he’s at Wanda’s. He closes his eyes and whispers that. He isn’t there anymore. Alexander let him leave after he did what he always did and he came here and he’s asleep in the room that had once been his and that Wanda says still is and the door is locked.

Alexander hit him with the belt tonight when he was on his knees, and he threw his arm up to try and protect himself even though he knew, as he was doing it, that he shouldn’t, and Pierce held his arm down and hit him with it until he passed out but that meant he didn’t have to be awake when Pierce fucked him.

He rocks himself back and forth on his knees and whispers, out loud, “He isn’t here, he isn’t here.”

He thinks about the dream and he sobs into his hand.

He allows himself, for the first time in months, to think about Steve for more than a few moments. He thinks about falling asleep next to him. He doesn’t allow himself to think about having sex with him, but he thinks about afterwards, about Steve’s body, warm and steady, against his, his fingers tracing over his chin and back, moving in small patterns or little words of such love that he would smile into his chest where his head was laying.

In this moment, the grief is almost unbearable. He wants Steve so much it takes on a life of its own, this craving, heavy and oppressive the way it had been when he lay awake at conversion camp, sobbing because he wanted him so badly. He wants to feel safe again, to be held and rocked and kissed on the forehead, to be touched selflessly and without any expectations for sex. He wants to be told _I love you_ and _you aren’t disgusting_ and _you’re good, Bucky._

 _You don’t deserve that,_ sneers a voice in his head, that is often there but that sound like Alexander’s right now. _You’ll never have that again._

He cries until he can’t breathe, and falls asleep on the floor.

***

Wanda makes him stop going.

He can’t hide it anymore. She saw it once, and he lied right to her and she backed off, but the second time it is so much worse and there’s not one excuse he can make. Misery and terror pour from him these days, the thin, cracked mask falling away. He’s stopped eating, because he’s basically stopped working because Alexander has marked every inch of him with pain and on the days he manages to get himself outside and someone brings him home, the second they get him undressed they recoil, and because anyway, he eats and he thinks about Alexander shoving his cock down Bucky’s throat and making him swallow and he ends up getting sick as soon as he feels full again. All he knows is pain and disgust. 

He comes back to Wanda’s one night after the worst night of all. He doesn’t remember most of it. Scott tells him he called him to pick him up, but he doesn’t remember that at all. He was late and before he could stammer an apology Alexander hit him across the face with a glass in his hand and shards burst around him and Bucky had felt like less than that, less than broken pieces of glass stained with blood. And then Alexander had said _look at you, you fucking disgusting pig,_ and hauled him up by his hair and snarled _You’re fucking repulsive, it’s a wonder I can look at you_ and then shoved him towards the bathroom and said _Get undressed, you little slut. Then kneel there and turn the cold water on and don’t bother with the hot._

Wanda tells him he’s gonna get himself killed if he goes back. He can’t tell her that isn’t true. Pierce won’t kill him, he will only make him wish he was dead. He agrees because he’s afraid she’ll call the cops if he doesn’t, and in that moment, pictures getting posted seem like less pain then going back there would be.

Scott tries to talk to him about it. It’s three days later, and Bucky can barely move, just curl up, small and useless, on Wanda’s couch while other people take care of him. Wanda and Scott have given up trying to make him see a doctor. He can barely say a word to them, because he can’t tell them who Alexander Pierce is or why Bucky allowed himself to be debased and brutalized the way he did for seven months, so he doesn’t say anything.

Scott sits carefully next to him and clears his throat. “Hey, buddy,” he says, overly gently. Bucky tries to give him a smile, but the muscles in his face are stiff and sore and in the end he just winces. “How are you doin’?”

“Fine,” Bucky says quietly.

Scott glances at his hands. “Buck,” he says, getting right to it, “who was the guy who did that to you?”

Bucky flinches and makes himself smaller.

“You know we can deal with him, right? You know Peter and Gamora will—”

“No,” Bucky mumbles.

“Bucky,” Scott says, “he hurt you—“

“Stop, Scott.”

“He’s been fucking… sexually abusing you—”

“Please stop,” Bucky whispers again. “Please, please stop.”

Scott listens, this time.

***

The terror doesn’t vanish. Everywhere he goes, he’s convinced he’s going to turn around and Alexander will be there, and he will haul him back into that fucking penthouse and punish him for breaking the rules. Or some cop will see him and pin him against the wall and arrest him on illegal pornography charges because he saw the pictures, or he’ll go to Wanda’s and she’ll snarl at him that she saw them and he’s disgusting and she wants nothing to do with him. 

He hates being touched. He flinches every time a man puts his hands on him and when they fuck him, he closes his eyes and waits for it to be over. He stays away from fiftieth street, because he is so scared of Brock that it overwhelms him. He’s out with Wanda one day and sees a guy who looks like Alexander one day and grabs her arm and drags her around the corner and waits, flinching, convinced that he has seen him and any second, he’s gonna turn the corner and grab him by the hair and hurt him until he can’t feel his limbs, but the moment passes and the guy wasn’t him at all and Wanda has to place both hands on his face and say, gently, “Bucky, babe, calm down, it’s alright,” and when she tries to get him to explain, he shakes his head mutely and she knows better than to keep asking.

Some days, when he can’t sleep even though the exhaustion is so heavy that it must burn through his nerves, when he stares up at a starless sky from the middle of a parking lot or at a photo of the wife and kids of the man who just fucked him, who fell asleep with his breath hot against Bucky’s neck, he tries to work out why. He tries to track the bad things in his life that led to this, what moment there was that turned his path this way. When he got caught with Steve. When he ran away from home. When he was seven and got his arm mangled irreparably. The first man who he ever let fuck him. What he could have done to change things.

_You’re bad, James._

Alexander was right about that. There wasn’t one thing, because it was in him, this poison. He is bad, he is disgusting and worthless and unnatural and deformed (and other things. Unloved and pathetic and a burden and a _stupid little good for one thing fucking slut_ ). It’s written all over him, this worthlessness, in the missing arm and the hollow cheeks and eyes and the scars that just keep overlapping on his skin. This is his life because he deserves this, not because he did one wrong thing that set a lot of wrong things in motion.

***

“You’re good,” Steve tells him, months later. Bucky is limp and exhausted and wrung out from tears in his arms, but he’s warm and held and Steve kisses his hair. “You’re so, so good, baby.

He doesn’t know yet how to believe that, but he wants to. He tilts his head forward into the crook of Steve’s neck and closes his eyes as Steve rubs his back, lets being loved and safe pour over him, flood him, overtake him. He wants to beg Steve to say it again. He wants to beg Steve to never let him go.

And Steve never does.

**Author's Note:**

> i very much appreciate and adore comments as u all know by now! i wasn’t gonna post this i wrote it basically for my own sense of how to think about what bucky went through while i was writing the main story but yall said u like these little oneshot things so here u areeee
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr
> 
> will probably update eitd sunday sorry for not doing it last weekend! lots of love


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